Black Wolf: A Dreamland Thriller

by Dale Brown

  “One of my deputies will call you within the hour,” he told Nuri. “In the meantime, if you need further arrangements, please let me know.”

  The minister’s tone suggested that it would be very much all right with him if they never spoke again. Which was fine with Nuri as well.

  The deputy, Johann Lacu, called within the hour. He spoke English fairly well and had a clipped, professional style Nuri liked.

  The deputy asked how many men he needed; Nuri told him no more than six.

  “Six is a very small number,” replied Lacu. “These criminals may be very desperate.”

  “Six is all we need,” Nuri told him. “We can even do with less.”

  “You will need cars to take them away in.”

  Ambulances more likely, thought Nuri.

  “We already have transportation arranged,” he said. “The operation really is under control.”

  “That is very good,” said Lacu. “We will assist in any way possible.”

  They arranged to meet at 11:00 P.M. at a small church in a village two kilometers north of Drochia. Nuri would brief them, then find some excuse to keep them occupied for a few hours until the raid was complete. At that point they would drive to the farm, which was roughly a half hour away. Gleeb, meanwhile, would stay in the capital to cover any further contingencies with the military or the interior ministry.

  Not knowing what to expect and not having anything else to do in Chisinau, Nuri left the capital shortly after noon. He arrived at the town just after sunset.

  The place looked quiet enough, a typical Eastern European town down on its luck. The church overlooked a small cemetery and an even smaller park with a monument to soldiers who had died in the Great Patriotic War—the Second World War, as the West remembered it.

  The town was so small it didn’t have a restaurant. Nuri drove until he came to another village about four kilometers away. The main and only intersection in town featured a café. He parked in a lot around the corner.

  The restaurant was empty, and the middle-aged hostess nearly jumped as he came in the door.

  “Good evening,” she said in Moldovan.

  Nuri answered in Moldovan, but his accent drove her to English. She told him he was very welcome and showed him to what she called the best table in the house. This was not coincidentally in the front window, where she undoubtedly hoped his presence would attract other customers. She gave him a menu and asked if he would like an aperitif.

  “Just water,” he said.

  She returned with a tray of homemade cordials, each brightly colored and most with some sort of fruit in the bottle.

  “No, that’s all right,” said Nuri.

  “For free, for free,” she insisted.

  Deciding that courtesy called for a small drink, he had a glass of what looked like the least exotic concoction, an orange-tinted syrup that he hoped would taste something like Grand Marnier, or maybe cough syrup.

  It was more like liquid fire. Jelled liquid fire. Like napalm, it clung to his throat.

  “Good?” asked the woman.

  “Oh yeah. Good,” managed Nuri. “Can I have some water?”

  She came back with the menu as well. It offered food in three languages—Moldovan, English, and Russian.

  “Do you get a lot of Russians in here?” he asked the hostess after he ordered a small steak.

  “Russian?” The woman made a face and said something Moldovan that was too low for the computer to pick up but was clearly not a compliment.

  “The Russians cause problems?” Nuri asked.

  “You are Russian?”

  “No, no. American.”

  “I thought,” said the woman. She nodded approvingly and began talking. She didn’t like Russians. She told him that they were dirty pigs and often didn’t pay their bills. The café got a few every few months, big lugs who smelled like sweaty cows.

  “Four yesterday, for lunch,” she said. “Enough for a year.”

  “Are they tourists?”

  She made another face.

  “You have a lot of tourists?” Nuri asked.

  “Tourists? Here? We have one place to stay. A small place. And this restaurant. What tourists would come here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There are no other restaurants or hotels—that is why people stop here. The countryside, maybe. They see, they like. Every so often, though—Russians.”

  “Why? They looking for a bargain?”

  She shrugged.

  “They say they train for Olympics,” she told him. “Bicyclists.”

  “Bicyclists?” Nuri wasn’t sure he heard the word right.

  The hostess frowned and waved her hand. “I know what bicyclists look like. Skinny. These are always big. American football. Bicyclists? Ha!”

  She walked off, shaking her head.

  Nuri remembered the woman’s complaints an hour later, after dinner, when he left the restaurant and heard Russian being spoken behind him. He walked another step, then stopped, looking both ways as if trying to see if it was safe to cross the street.

  Two men were entering the café. They were the only other people out.

  He thought about them as he walked back to his car. The Russian mafiya was involved in many of the marijuana operations in Moldova, and while this wasn’t a big area for pot cultivation, he had firsthand proof that it wasn’t entirely bereft of it either.

  Would the Wolves stop here on their way to the farm? If you didn’t want everyone descending in one swoop, maybe. It was right on the road.

  More likely not, he decided. But he couldn’t get the idea out of his mind. He walked back, glancing into the restaurant from the other side of the street. The men were seated toward the back of the room, barely visible through the large window. Clearly, the hostess didn’t see their presence as helping business much.

  Nuri thought of going in and leaving a bug—he had several in his bag in the car. But it was likely the woman would greet him in a way that made it obvious he’d decided to come back. Even if he came up with a plausible excuse, he might make the Russians suspicious.

  He changed direction and headed back toward his car. Just as he was about to cross over, he saw the sign for the hotel the hostess had mentioned. It was more house than hotel, a small, late nineteenth-century residence divided into guest rooms.

  Nuri got his bag out of the car and went to the hotel. The clerk at the desk was also the owner, a rotund but friendly woman in her fifties, who smiled when Nuri told her the owner of the café had recommended he stay there.

  “I’m a little tired and just need the night,” he said in Moldovan, with MY-PID’s help. “You have rooms?”

  They had four. Three were open.

  “Maybe my friend is in the other?” he asked, switching to English.

  The sign outside had indicated that English was spoken, but the woman didn’t know much beyond “hello” and “credit card.” Nuri was counting on this—he started describing his friend in great detail.

  The woman held up her hands and told him in Moldovan that she didn’t understand.

  “My friend, my friend,” he said. “A businessman—he came from this town.”

  “We have two guests,” she said. “Russian. In Room 4. They’re foul-smelling oafs, but money is money.”

  “Money, yes,” said Nuri, pretending that he hadn’t understood entirely. “You have my credit card.”

  “Everything good.”

  “Great,” he said. “Where is my room?”

  Nuri’s room was directly across from the Russians’. He put his bag down in it, then went across the hall and knocked on their door, just to make sure no one was there.

  When no one answered, he played a hunch, fitting his room key into theirs. The door opened without his even needing to jiggle it.

  He slipped a bug into the light fixture, then decided that was too obvious. He found a better spot in the baseboard heater, and left another in the bathroom beneath the sink.

>   Could he do more?

  He looked around the room. The men had each brought a small overnight bag containing only a change of clothes and a couple of bottles of vodka. There was no laptop to inspect, no papers to rifle through. He had a tracking bug, but he thought it would be conspicuous inside either piece of luggage, given that there were no interior pockets or other crevices where it could be easily hidden.

  Back in his room, he tossed his bag out the window into the yard so it wouldn’t be obvious he was leaving for good. That turned out to be unnecessary—the proprietor had gone into her own apartment to watch television when he came down, and didn’t even see him leave.

  As he walked around to get his bag, he noticed a small parking lot at the back of the house. He scooped up his bag and walked over to the two cars in the lot—a ten-year-old Toyota, and a new Hyundai.

  Which one belonged to the Russian?

  The Hyundai surely, he decided, but with two trackers in his pocket, he bugged both, slipping the devices over the cars’ gas tanks.

  Nuri drove around the countryside for over an hour, partly to kill time and partly to get a feel for the area. The gentle hills and abundant streams made for excellent small-scale farming, but small-scale farming couldn’t compete with the much larger operation elsewhere in Europe, let alone the rest of the world.

  On the one hand, the Moldovans had an almost idyllic setting and lifestyle; on the other hand, they were poor, at least by Western standards. He had seen incredible poverty in Africa, and no place in Europe would ever match that. But he couldn’t help feeling somewhat sympathetic to this country, which seemed better suited for the nineteenth century than the twenty-first.

  His job wasn’t to be sympathetic. He was just starting to head for the meeting with the police when MY-PID reported that the Russians had returned to their rented room. Listening to them was better than the radio, and so he had the computer translate for him as he drove.

  The beginnings of the conversation were mundane—they criticized the food they’d just eaten and debated whether the hostess would have been worth taking to bed.

  Then they broke out the vodka.

  “We ought to just go out tonight,” said one. “Better to sleep there than in this flea trap.”

  “And risk Black’s wrath? You’re a fool.”

  “So what if he’s mad?”

  “He killed Ivanski for less.”

  “Ivanski was a fool.”

  “A dead fool now.”

  “Coming up in two and threes and fours—always cautious. He’s overcautious. A coward.”

  “Call him a coward to his face. That I would like to see.” The Russian laughed. “You assume he will be there.”

  “We’re to work with him.”

  “I wasn’t told that. Were you?”

  “No. But every time we come to this armpit, who do we work for?”

  “I worked for the Frenchman once.”

  “A good man to work for. Plenty to drink. Unlike Black.”

  “It will be good to work again.”

  “I’m ready. I would go tonight.”

  “Going at seven is plenty of time for me. At least we will get a good night’s sleep.”

  “Not a good breakfast, though.”

  “The café will have a good breakfast. They’ll have strong coffee.”

  “I feel like going back and screwing the woman.”

  “She’s older than your grandmother, and not half as good looking.”

  They traded insults, then fell silent, and soon were snoring.

  Nuri was surprised to see a dozen police cars parked outside the church. Even more surprising, there were nearly fifty officers inside, all dressed in riot gear.

  “You are the American!” said a thin, jolly man who met him near the door. He spoke English with more enthusiasm than polish. “You are very welcome.”

  “Are you Johann Lacu?” said Nuri.

  “No, no—there’s Johann.”

  “Mr. Lupo—Mr. Lupo.” A tall, thin man with a goatee and moustache separated himself from the crowd. “Here I am.”

  “There were only supposed to be six people,” said Nuri. “Less.”

  “We need more for a raid,” said Lacu cheerfully. “These are dangerous people. I have more men on the way. And an armored car.”

  Nuri rubbed his forehead, wondering how he was going to keep the crowd busy for the next several hours. They didn’t have all that far to go—the farm was under ten miles away—and he didn’t want to give away the location until Danny and the rest of the team was in place.

  “We are happy to do something against the drugs,” added Lacu. “These are all honest policemen. Their reputations are solid. People say we do not do anything—but what can they do when the people above them are corrupt?”

  “I understand,” said Nuri.

  “Where will be our target?”

  “There are several possible targets,” said Nuri, making it up as he went. “Four or five homes where they move around between. We’ll figure out which one it is, then you and your people will help surround it.”

  “If I saw the plans, I could help.”

  Nuri fended him off with assurances that the NATO team—he didn’t use the word Whiplash, of course—had everything under control. The Moldovans were only needed to secure the perimeter, and then take the prisoners. The deputy minister suggested that he should be with the team that made the arrests. Nuri agreed, an easy if empty promise.

  The deputy minister began introducing Nuri, showing off not just the men but the equipment they carried. They had an assortment of AK–47 models that would have done a museum proud, along with more pistol types than men. They even had a dozen Russian F1 hand grenades that had to be at least forty years old.

  “Good weapon,” said the policeman in charge of them. “Thirty meters, killing radius. Thirty meters. These fuses—four seconds.”

  He mimed throwing it.

  “Four seconds,” said the policeman. “One… two… three… ka-boom!”

  Nuri, willing to do anything to kill time, repeated the ritual himself.

  “How far can you run in four seconds?” he asked when he was done.

  “Very far, with grenade about to go off.”

  Nuri couldn’t argue with that.

  A sudden commotion outside announced the arrival of an armored car. Nuri went out with the others to inspect it. He looked at it in great detail, admiring the gun at the top and taking a turn sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “A handsome weapon, eh?” said Lacu as he climbed out.

  “Very handsome,” said Nuri.

  “We will use it on you if this turns out to be a wild goose chase,” added the deputy minister.

  Nuri smiled. He thought Lacu was joking, but couldn’t be one hundred percent sure.

  42

  Northeastern Moldova

  At exactly ten minutes after eleven Danny Freah turned off the highway about five miles from the Ukrainian border, pulling down a dirt road to a field he had scouted earlier that afternoon. He got out of the car and checked his watch, then walked up the road about two hundred meters. A broad field lay to his left. Owned by a family who lived on the other side of town some seven kilometers away, the farm had lain fallow for several years.

  At eleven-fifteen the sky began filling with clouds. The moon played peekaboo with them for a few minutes, then completely disappeared.

  At eleven-twenty a small red light flashed twice from the middle of the cloud bank.

  Danny raised his arm and flashed his wrist light in response. A voice crackled over the ear set he was wearing.

  “Whiplash Transport to Ground. Please confirm your identity.”

  “This is Whiplash One. How do you read me?”

  “Whiplash One acknowledged. Strong coms.”

  “Bring it in,” said Danny.

  The clouds began to descend. Only when they were within a few feet of the ground did it become obvious they weren’t clouds but an array
of airships, camouflaged by a combination of LEDs and vapor generators, which poured mist from faceted baffles and outriggers. The baffles were arranged to reduce their radar signal during flight, when the mist wasn’t being used, making them harder to pick up from a distance.

  The first dirigible glided down to a landing thirty meters from Danny. Two more touched down directly behind it.

  The cargo compartment was a combination of angles and curves; the leading edge looked somewhat similar to the lip of the SR–71 Blackbird, though this aircraft was as slow as that one was fast. The lip dropped down and a four-wheel-drive pickup lurched out, moving silently on an all-electric motor.

  “Hey, Colonel,” yelled Boston, leaning out of the driver’s window. “Want to drag?”

  “Only if I’m in one of the Rattlesnakes.”

  “Maybe you can hang from the skids,” said Boston. “No room for you inside.”

  He wasn’t kidding—the fuselage of the remote controlled helicopter was no bigger than Danny’s desk at his old command. Two of them, with winglet and rotors folded up, were in the back of the pickup.

  He watched as Boston parked the truck and checked the rest of the team. The six pickup trucks they’d brought looked like oversized four-door civilian Chrysler Rams. And in fact they had started life as Ram 1500s.

  Then subcontractors for the Office of Technology had gone to work. The trucks were outfitted with dual engines—turbocharged big block gasoline engines for fast travel, and heavy-duty electric motors for quiet travel. Screens were installed on the dashboards to interface with MY-PID. The metal skin and windows were doubled and reinforced, and an exterior wall of reactive armor added. This outer skin was designed to explode rocket-propelled grenades before their charges could penetrate; it augmented a “kill first” detection system mounted beneath what looked like a cargo carrier on the truck roofs.

  “All present and accounted for, Colonel,” said Boston. “Ready any time you are.”

  Danny signaled to the blimps to take off. They were guided by computer; there were no human pilots aboard. A duty officer back in the Ukraine watched over them as they flew. He would step in only if necessary.